Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001), about a ten-year-old girl's quest to find her way home from a parallel spirit world, is one of the greatest animated films ever made, said Louis Chilton in The Independent.
An "idiosyncratic" and singular piece of art, it does not cry out for a stage adaptation. But if there must be one, "it's impossible to imagine a better one than this". Adapted and directed by John Caird, the production, performed in Japanese with English surtitles, sees Miyazaki's human and paranormal characters wondrously transformed into flesh and puppetry. First staged in Japan in 2022, it boasts visual flair, great scenic innovation, a stunning musical score and superb acting. It doesn't augment Miyazaki's film in "any sort of cerebral or thematic way. But it does inject the story with fresh life, with the kind of charged intimacy that you only get in live performance."
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